Biogen employees: Dread 2022! Which is worse? Layoff or Staying?

[anonymous]

It's pretty clear to most in the industry that Biogen wildly overestimated the market uptake and botched the Adu pricing. In hindsight, they should've priced and/or contracted more responsibly at the outset, but Biogen has historically never been shy about pricing high and taking aggressive price increases. While they could get away with it in some therapeutic areas, this was not one of them.

You can't completely blame it on Biogen HQ's greed or hubris though, some of it was just bad luck. They took a regulatory gamble and won, they were first to market, and they knew that competition would not be far behind. Unfortunately for them, the clinical data caveats (not uncommon with accelerated approvals) combined with the public scrutiny served to magnify their aggressive, yet failed bet.

With the sales forecast now a fraction of what it once was, they *WILL* need to make meaningful cuts to operating expenses - and it's sad that that will inevitably mean deep headcount cuts. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional (and haven't looked at their latest earnings reports).

I will never understand why people feel glee over others being impacted though. Like with any company, there are both good and bad apples everywhere. Both will get caught up in the upcoming RIF, but that's the nature of the industry. I don't work at Biogen but I know many good people there and many are actively looking for new jobs. Some will stay, some will leave. They will all be just fine. It doesn't change that it may be a stressful time for some though - and I will do what I can to support them, because one day it will be me, and I know they would do the same.

Best of luck to all in 2022 - we all need it.

Nice post and all, but you have no true idea what has gone wrong here. It so far beyond what you’ve written. Yes, some is bad luck, but there is PLETNY beyond what you mentioned that would have made this go much better. Like you said, you don’t even work here, so I understand that there’s no way that you could know. The sad thing is that their sales forecasts are still ridiculous - 50K patients in 2022. HQ is insane.